And here Mr. Spencer’s argument takes a new departure and carries us on to the point where we shall be compelled to leave it. As governments and civilisations have advanced, he says, they have taken two forms—that in which the original military element still continues to preponderate, and that in which the military element becomes gradually subordinate to the industrial. “_The former_,” he says, “_in its developed form is organised on the principle of compulsory organisation, whilst the latter in its developed form is organised on the principle of voluntary co-operation_”; and the latter {38} amongst civilised nations always tends to supersede the former, in precise proportion as war tends to become less common. The industrial form, it may be observed, corresponds in a general way to the kinds of government commonly called “democratic”; but its emergence, says Mr. Spencer, has its most important effects in the sphere not of politics, but of economic production. Originally the conditions of industry were regulated by the dictates of the military and aristocratic ruler, as they are to-day in some savage communities, and as they partially were in France till towards the close of the last century. Under such a _régime_ the very “_right to labour_” itself is regarded as belonging to the King; and he sells it to his subjects on such terms as he may choose. But as the military element in the government declines, not only does the character of governmental legislation change, but industry frees itself from governmental influence altogether. No king any longer arranges markets, fixes wages or prices, and settles what kind and quantities of commodities shall be produced. Industry becomes, as Mr. Spencer says, “_substantially independent_.” He does not mean, however, that it needs no regulation. It needs as much as ever a constant and nice adjustment of the things produced to the current requirements of the community; but this adjustment is now secured not by the interference of a political ruler, but by a system which has spontaneously developed itself amongst the trading and manufacturing classes. It is a system, says Mr. Spencer, {39} which we may call “_internuncial, through which the various structures_ (i.e. _manufacturing firms, etc._) _receive from one another stimuli or checks, caused by rises and falls in the consumption of their respective products. . . . Markets in the chief towns show dealers the varying relations of supply and demand; and the reports of these transactions, diffused by the press, prompt each locality to increase or decrease of its special functions. . . . That is to say, there has arisen, in addition to the political regulating system, an industrial regulating system, which carries on its co-ordinating function independently—a separate plexus of connected ganglia._”